Walking the Great Wall of China

Company offers hikers adventurous trip along the Great Wall of China

The Great Wall Adventure Club arranges hikes from one to 12 days, mostly along remote sections
of the wall. (There might be as many as eight travelers in a group, but we were lucky to be just
the four of us.) Some inclines are steep, and the trails are often over stone rubble with drop-offs
to either side, but the hike shouldn’t be difficult if you’re in average physical condition and
wearing decent shoes - even without someone to hold your hand or fan you.

The two-day hike from Gubeikou to Second Valley includes an English-speaking guide, pickup and
return to your Beijing hotel, two lunches, a dinner and a breakfast (and sleeping in a tent in a
watchtower, if the weather cooperates; sleeping bags and tents provided); $399 per person, based on
double occupancy;
greatwalladventure.com; 800-347-9981.

For detailed information about hiking the Great Wall, consult the e-book “Walk the Great Wall,”
by Bryan Feldman.

At first, I thought the faded pink pillow on the crumbling stone floor of the watchtower was a
remnant of a previous camping trip.

“Are we coming back here to sleep?” I asked our guide, Joe Zhang, at the beginning of a two-day
hike in July 2012 along the Great Wall of China.

Joe shook his head and guessed that the pillow belonged to a farmer passing through.

“If we camp tonight, we’ll set up tents inside a watchtower that way,” he said, pointing to the
wall that snaked through lush Panlong (Coiling Dragon) Mountain, part of the Yanshan Range. “If we
camp.”

That “if,” which he felt compelled to repeat, bothered me. My family had signed up with the
Dallas-based company Great Wall Adventure Club to hike this remote part of the Great Wall because I
loved the idea of sleeping on the wall.

I envisioned drifting off to the sounds and scents that a Mongol-fighting soldier would have
experienced centuries ago, of seeing the sunrise burst over peaks crowned by ancient crenelated
watchtowers. Plenty of tour operators take visitors on half-day tours from Beijing to the Badaling
or Mutianyu sections of the Great Wall, but I wanted to escape the crowds and get a wilder, deeper
experience with the adventure club, which said we would camp on the wall, weather permitting.

At 8 a.m., Joe and a driver picked us up in Beijing and we rode 90 miles to the village of
Gubeikou. When the driver dropped us off, we took only what we needed — water, sunscreen, cameras
and lunch. Our overnight bags stayed in the van with the driver, who would meet us at the end of
our day’s 6-mile hike in the town of Jinshanling, a 20- minute drive away.

The Great Wall — 5,500 miles by some counts, longer by others — isn’t one wall but many that
were built starting in ancient times and were consolidated and reinforced during the Ming dynasty
(1368-1644). The purpose: keeping northern raiders from swooping down into the heart of China. The
stretch of wall between Gubeikou and Jinshanling, which we hiked on the first day, is strong and
well-reinforced, its 23-foot height constructed of brick, with more than 40 closely spaced
watchtowers. As we began our hike, I was struck by the eternal loneliness and loveliness — as far
as I could see, nothing but that golden line snaking across the crumpled mountains.

Joe pointed out a “character brick,” where the stamp of the maker is still visible after almost
half a millennium.

“You couldn’t see that at Badaling,” Joe said, referring to the most-visited and photographed
part of the wall closer to Beijing, but the throngs of tourists are so thick, he said, that you
feel like a “dumpling in a pot.” He also said that Badaling was heavily restored — and not always
authentically.

The wall around Gubeikou has been untouched except for spot repairs on unsafe areas, and part of
the thrill is seeing it survive the war that nature has been waging against it for hundreds of
years. Weeds have taken over much of what was once a 13-foot-wide surface, with only a narrow path
in places formed by earlier hikers. Many watchtowers were just ghostly shells with window holes,
but some were surprisingly intact. On several we saw artful brickwork surrounding the arched
windows; one tower had a complete domed ceiling.

In one watchtower, we shared a simple picnic lunch during which Joe told us we were coming to a
forbidden section: a part of the wall we couldn’t walk on because it is still used as the northern
boundary of an army compound. We walked the next 90 minutes in the brush below the wall — passing
by cornfields, pear trees, irrigation canals, old cottages and wildflowers. Then we spent the rest
of the day back on top, seeing just two other groups of hikers. If the weather had been good, our
driver would have taken us back to the area around Gubeikou to camp, but rain threatened.

“You don’t want to be in a watchtower during a thunderstorm,” Joe said.

I sulked while we drove to the nearby town of Ba Ke Shi Ying to spend the night at a farm where
the owner had built a strip of rooms to take advantage of the newly prosperous Beijingers flocking
there.

Our rooms — with hard twin beds, bare floors and scratchy towels — faced a dense garden bursting
with cucumbers, eggplant, green beans and kale, and our disappointment at not camping was assuaged
by the exquisite meal we ate outside under an awning as the rain and thunder began. By morning, fog
had replaced the rain. After a short drive to Jinshanling, we walked back up to the wall and hiked
along it for 3 roller-coaster miles. The wall became more deteriorated as we approached Second
Valley — our endpoint.

We marveled at the eerie splendor the fog brought to the ruins. At one watchtower, Joe told us a
legend of Hei Gu, who came with her father, a Ming dynasty general, to take care of him as he
worked.

“One day this tower was hit by lightning, and she died in the fire trying to save it.”

I suspected Joe’s story was a justification of the decision not to camp until I noticed a plaque
that confirmed the legend’s details. I then saw another sign that warned people to get off the wall
during thunderstorms. The wall, it said, was the highest point on the ridges and especially
vulnerable to lightning.